


Follow the Leader

by lorata



Series: We Must Be Killers: Tales from District 2 [3]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 30th Hunger Games, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Careers (Hunger Games), Careers Have Issues, Conditioning, District 2, Dystopia, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Peacekeepers, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7433212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This is what happens to people who break the rules.</i>
</p>
<p>District 2's presumptive volunteer for the 30th Hunger Games is killed in a training accident two days before the Reaping. Joseph, 18 years old and already scouted by the Peacekeeping Academy, watches in horror as the replacement volunteer loses his nerve on the big day and fails to step forward. After that an Example needs to be made, and it's one that Joseph can never forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow the Leader

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xanify](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xanify/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Five Times District Two Volunteering Went Wrong](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/212407) by azelmaroark. 



> Inspired by azelmaroark's 5 Times fic for District 2 volunteering, which I've cribbed from before. This can also be considered a companion/prequel to [Make Us Proud](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5179742), by me, but it should work as a standalone.

Joseph fought for the top slot in his class all the way through the Program only to graduate in third place, leaving the Centre with a copper-threaded Program bracelet around his wrist to mark a candidate who made it almost to the end.

He’d been shocked and horrified with the rest of them when Adam took a head blow in training that dropped him dead on the mats two days before the Reaping. Not Joseph’s fault, thank the Capitol, though he’d been there to see it and run for the trainers, and shock and horror yes but it would be a lie to say he hadn’t felt a thrill of excitement, too. Adam dead meant the runner-up would have the honour of taking his place, and Joseph and Adam had broken each other’s noses back and forth in training ever since they were eight years old. If it wasn’t Adam it would be Joseph, and he’d gone to bed that night in full uniform, convinced the trainers would wake him up to give him the news.

He’d waited up, staring at the ceiling and half-dozing in fits, jerking awake at the slightest creak in the hallways outside, imagining what he’d say and how he’d react when they told him the news. How to play it so he’d look ready and willing to accept the responsibility but not so much they’d think he might have deliberately sabotaged Adam’s chances.

Finally Joseph fell asleep for good in the hours before the wake-up bell, and in the morning it was James who had a fresh gold bead on his wrist and an expression like someone had punched him hard in the gut. Joseph nearly dropped his breakfast tray but he caught a hold of himself and didn’t make a scene, not with the trainers always watching.

At least not in public. Once he choked down his protein shake and flavourless oatmeal Joseph hauled himself out of the cafeteria before he did something stupid and hit the weapons room instead, grabbing a sword and carving through half a dozen wooden dummies until he wrenched his shoulder on an angry swing. There he’d stopped, eyes stinging from the sweat that dripped down from his hair, and he’d swiped an arm across his forehead and nearly yelped when he looked up to see a trainer standing in front of him.

“Joseph,” she’d said, one eyebrow cocked. “You’re late for morning drills. Is there a problem?”

“No sir,” Joseph said immediately, because he might be angry but he wasn’t stupid. He’d swallowed the hurt and disappointment and the pricking of guilt because they’d known, somehow, that he’d been glad for Adam’s death, and now here was his punishment. “Should I go straight there, or do laps first?”

“Walk with me,” she’d said instead, and Joseph had followed, eyes wide and heart thumping. He’d actually carried the sword with him halfway out of the room before she cleared her throat, and he left it hastily atop the rack and jogged back to join her at the door.

They took a circuit around the halls as Joseph caught his breath, passing the thirteen-year-olds practicing their joint locks and a pair of fourteens running laps around the indoor track while shooting each other poisonous glares that meant this was punishment for scrapping after hours. The trainer said nothing, perhaps waiting to see if Joseph would break first, but eleven years in the Program meant he knew better and he kept pace in silence.

Finally she stopped at the doorway overlooking the field, and she stepped through and ushered Joseph after her. They stood together on the square of concrete outside the door, and Joseph stared down at his feet and the line of grass edging the hard grey cement and wondered what he could have done to be better.

“You’re disappointed,” she said. It was not a question.

Joseph froze for the second time. The trainers encouraged lying as long as you didn’t get caught — _no I’ve never killed an animal before, no of course I’ve never practiced with a knife before I’m only ten_ — but in situations where the reason for the lie was obvious and its telling served a purpose. Here, as much as Joseph struggled to find the correct response, nothing came to him. He cast about uselessly for a moment, but he couldn’t keep her waiting and so he finally said, “I thought I was at least better than James.”

A sulky answer, to be sure, but an honest one, and nobody said truth had to be pretty.

She actually laughed, which shocked Joseph almost as much as seeing Adam hit the mats and not stand up after a simple kick. “The truth is, you are.”

“Then why —“ Joseph burst out before he could stop himself, and he bit down on his tongue hard enough that the pain radiated through his jaw. “Sorry,” he said, too little too late, but she had to know what kind of reaction that statement would produce.

“We don’t just train tributes, Joseph,” she said, looking out over the close-cropped grass. “Graduates from the Program go on to do many things, and we help them get there. Oh, some of them go back to the quarries and start families, sure, but even they are more likely to send their children back here. As for the rest of you — there are lots of possibilities.”

“Sir,” Joseph said cautiously. She hadn’t meant to insult him by lumping him in with the quarriers — and Joseph meant no offence to the bedrock of their nation either — but honestly. Wherever this conversation headed, he doubted he would enjoy the destination.

The trainer glanced at him, mouth quirked as though she could guess the colour of his thoughts. “The Academy wants you,” she said. “You’re a promising candidate, and once we selected Adam to volunteer, they asked us to recommend you to the Peacekeeping track after graduation. There’s more you can do for this country than dying for it.”

Joseph opened his mouth, closed it again, and stared blankly. An odd flush started in his chest and spread out, filling him with a warm tingling sensation that threatened to make him do something entirely stupid like grin or even laugh. “I — sir,” Joseph said again. “Really?”

“Really,” she said, and clapped her hand against his shoulder. “James is a good fit for the Arena, as was Adam, but we think you’re meant for something else.”

“Oh,” Joseph said. “I — thank you, sir.”

“Now you can join the drills,” she said, and wonder of wonders she winked at him too. “But take a few laps first so you’re out of breath when you get there.”

“Yes sir,” Joseph said with feeling, and promptly registered nothing of importance for the rest of the day.

 

* * *

 

The strange, floaty feeling stayed with Joseph until the Reaping, as he finished out his training with the knowledge that he would never stand on stage, never board the tribute train, never see the Arena or meet the President face to face. It still rankled a little to know that James would get the honours when he’d always been the weakest of their trio, but knowledge of his greater purpose gave Joseph enough ground to make it through without incident. The others teased James, some more maliciously than others, and not a few accused him of orchestrating Adam’s death somehow so he could take the top slot.

(Joseph never believed that for a second. He remembered, even if the others were too young, that James threw up over himself after his first kill test, although he’d pulled himself together enough after to wrangle a satisfactory passing score. But he’d always been content to let Joseph and Adam tangle for first place, skating by on natural talent and unprecedented acting scores to nab the spot beneath them. He wasn’t the kind to resort to murder to get his crack at the Arena.)

The day of the Reaping, Joseph stood with the other Seniors at the back of the square, left hand clasped over his bracelet to hide the telltale beads from knowing cameras. He watched as the escort onstage called the boy, and the image onscreen swooped down to a grey-eyed, sandy-haired kid who looked around fourteen or fifteen. Merchant class, no quarry muscles on this one, terrified and gulping air, and the cameras focused on his gaze flicking from side to side as the boy waited for his saviour.

Joseph waited too, pulse pounding in his skull and nails digging into his palm, as James let the seconds tick by for dramatic effect.

And then, they waited more.

The cameras hovered over the square, searching for the prospective Volunteer, and ever since he was a little boy Joseph had it drilled into him not to speak at the Reaping, don’t move, don’t even breathe, and so he didn’t. If he looked at James then that might tip off eagle-eyed viewers before the reveal, but the seconds dragged on and the escort called “Any volunteers?” a second time and nobody moved.

A sound slowly penetrated through the ringing in Joseph’s ears: ragged breathing, harsh and broken and nothing that had any business coming from a candidate who made it through eleven years of training and kill tests and exposure tests and everything else. Finally Joseph couldn’t stand it, not with the boy slowly making his way up the stairs to the stage on shaky legs, the crowd murmuring with the first whispers of confusion despite the unspoken rule of silence.

“James!” he hissed through his teeth, doing his best to keep his lips from moving. “James, go!”

Silence for five agonizing heartbeats as Joseph’s stomach churned. And then, the worst two words for a tribute candidate from Two, words that would mean expulsion from the program at fourteen, let alone the Reaping Day, words that represented the worst kind of treason and cowardice and everything Joseph had been taught to hate and fear since the day he learned that words have power:

“I can’t.”

If this happened on the sparring mat Joseph would have grabbed James by the throat and shoved him into a wall, punched him right across the face for the weakness and to show the trainers he didn’t share it. If James had hesitated before a Centre test, if he’d balked before jumping in the frozen lake for their swim trial or refused to jump from the roof onto the pile of mats below, Joseph would have cracked a joke about District Ten chickens before pushing him in headfirst.

But this was not the Centre with no one watching but the trainers. This was the Reaping Square with the entire country watching, and somewhere the President was sitting in front of a screen while James shamed his entire district and Joseph couldn’t move, he couldn’t make it worse, couldn’t let on that he knew what was meant to happen and who was meant to do it because those were the rules and trainees always followed the rules.

But now the boy stood in front of the microphone stand, his head barely reaching the top, and no this wasn’t right, this could not be happening. Except yes it was because the escort asked his name, and if no one moved District Two would have their first non-Volunteer for the first time in the history of the entire Games, and someone had to do something —

It hit Joseph then like a blow from a mace to the chest. Two words of his own would fix all of this and make it go away. Two words and they could write off the over-long pause to an overeager tribute’s desire for a dramatic reveal, turn it into a joke that would follow him through the pre-Arena coverage and make it into one of the interview questions.

Joseph only had to volunteer and no one outside the Program would ever know something went wrong. He’d wanted this anyway, fought tooth and nail past boys who had been taller or stronger or broader. He’d killed three men and two women and had survived a weekend on a frozen mountaintop with nothing more than a backpack filled with regulation gear. This is what he had been born to do. Three months ago, this is what he had nearly made himself sick from losing.

_I volunteer_ , the words whispered in the back of Joseph’s mind. Two words. Four syllables. Do it and restore honour to his district before ever stepping in the Arena. Do it and be a hero regardless of who wore the crown in a month’s time.

_There’s more you can do for this country than dying for it._

The words stuck in Joseph’s throat as James’ breaths shattered into sobs, and at last the escort stepped back up to the microphone and announced the girl.

Vera didn’t hesitate. She barely waited for the escort to finish, clipping off the end of the hapless girl’s merchant-class surname before shouting loud enough that everyone nearby jumped. She waved at the crowd, flashing a winning smile at the cameras, then turned to offer her classmates an unsanctioned but not forbidden farewell. Joseph responded to her raised hand with a high-five, too stunned to do anything but respond with automatic gestures as his brain continued spinning.

“I hope they bring you to me in the Justice Building so I can rip your face off before the train,” Vera said to James, her expression sickly-sweet and smiling for the cameras, and then she whirled and stalked toward the stage with her head held high.

Joseph said nothing through the rest of the ceremony, barely even registered the tributes and mentors exiting and the crowd dispersing. Everything blurred together until two Peacekeepers grabbed James by the elbows and dragged him upright. He’d been crying still, big, round tears falling from his face, but at the sight of the Peacekeepers his expression went careful, studied, tribute-candidate blank, acting training rising to the occasion when his courage failed.

Funny, but Joseph hated him more in that moment than any of the ones before, as James worked himself into an attitude of perfect obedience even as they marched him to the Justice Building.

At the far end of the square a woman shouted at the closed doors as a father wept, until a knot of Peacekeepers and their guns convinced them to move along and accept the Reaping like good, forthright citizens. The trainers came for the younger groups to lead them back to the Centre, but no one came to fetch the Seniors. Joseph still couldn’t move, none of them did, all the candidates from fifteen to eighteen standing in stunned silence in a huddled group as the sun baked their backs and the air rippled above the heat-soaked concrete.

Finally Joseph swallowed, his tongue sticking in his mouth. “I should’ve—“ he said, managing that much before the words slipped away again. He dropped his hand from his wrist, belatedly, and the skin flushed white and then pink from the imprint of his fingers as the blood returned. “I was next, I should’ve —“

“It wasn’t your job,” said Darren sharply. He was a few years beneath Joseph, passed his Field Exam right before the Reaping cutoff to stand in the Seniors line. “It wasn’t supposed to be you, it’s supposed to be _him_. You did exactly what you’re supposed to do.”

Joseph shook his head — a boy was going to die because Joseph said nothing, Two’s honour had been breached because _Joseph_ _said nothing_ — but then the Head of the Program crossed the square and stood in front of them and Joseph snapped to attention. He’d never seen the head in person, none of them have except the prospective Volunteers at the selection ceremony, and she stared at them now with hard blue eyes that pierced Joseph right through his chest.

“Come,” she said, and when she turned to lead them back to the Centre, not one of them waited long enough to blink.

 

* * *

 

The trainers who picked them up at the doors to the Centre building led them through to the wide room where they all watched the recaps together, only today there were no Juniors lounging on the floor or fighting each other for the best cushions. Today every candidate who hadn’t taken their Field Exam sat with their backs to the wall, hands pressed flat against their knees. In the centre of the room sat one lone occupant: James, kneeling on the hard floor with his hands shackled behind his back, bruises already purpling his face and throat.

Behind him, the screen that normally showed the Games broadcast a larger image of the room, complete with Joseph and the others grinding to a stop at the door. The first trainer crossed to stand in front of them, expression tight and furious. “You’re going to make an example,” he said, waving to the rows of silent, pale-faced trainees. “Show them what happens to traitors who break the rules and sabotage the Games. Show us you know better than that. Show the President that District 2 is loyal. Show them, us, the President, and every trainee who will see this in the future that you know the price of treason.”

They filed into the room slowly, Joseph at the front with the others milling behind, and uncertainty settled in his chest, heavy and dragging. He’d fought and killed and broken more bones than he can count, he’d taken injections of tracker jacker venom while the trainers asked him about his hallucinations and wrote down his raving answers, all that and more, but those were tests. Tests with a right answer and a wrong, with procedure to follow and precedent to back him up.

James in the middle of the room with his fellow trainees ringed around him, on the other hand, had no rules to follow, no precedent and no procedure with all of the pressure. No one spoke, and for a long stretch seconds happened but the sharp rise and fall of James’ shoulders, no sound but the harsh rasp of his laboured breaths as he knelt, head down, chin pressed in against his chest.

Joseph looked to the trainers, searching for answers, but while they all met his gaze no one gave him any hints. He glanced at the trainees lined up against the walls, their eyes wide but mouths pinched tight against any sound that might escape, and if any of them were going to make it through the Program without irreparable damage then they needed to believe this was right and just. Any hesitation from Joseph might transfer to the others, and the trouble with poison is that one single drop can taint a well.

Just as in the Arena, with justice and the law, hesitation meant death.

Joseph took one more second to stare at James, who knew better than to raise his head and make eye contact, and he allowed himself that second to feel the ugly shiver of — not empathy, exactly, but almost-understanding. In the square Joseph could have spoken, could have saved the boy now on the train to his inevitable death, but the tension and fear and upset of the entire situation kept him silent. Joseph would not have hesitated in James’ place, had the trainers chosen him, but he knew now how terror could choke back words until nothing emerged, how time moved too slowly around himself but too fast everywhere else until it was all too late.

One second, and no more. After that Joseph dug inside himself and found the dark, twisted place that allowed him to slit a man’s throat, stab a woman through the gut, slice a man across the belly, bash in a woman’s skull with a heavy stone, and choke a man to death with his bare hands. The place where reason and rationality disappeared and nothing mattered but the test, where failure meant death and humiliation and no scruples, no squeamish weakness, could even begin to measure up.

In his early days in the Program Joseph had feared heights, and so he’d climbed to the top of the agility rigging and flung himself down onto the lowest net again, again, again, until he could walk the ropes without a twinge. And so Joseph took every tiny scrap of understanding and buried it deep within himself, there with the memories of laughing with James from the roof of the Centre building when they all sneaked up after passing their Field Exams, of swapping his pear for James’ apricot in a moment of hidden daring as stupid, careless thirteen-year-olds, and he reared back and drove his boot into the side of the traitor’s head.

The others pressed in close, the dam broken by Joseph’s action, and they clamoured in for kicks and punches, grabbing the traitor by the hair and throwing him to the floor. Joseph got pushed back by the throng quickly enough, and while he shoved at the others, dodging elbows and flying fists and taking a few stray kicks to the shins, he never made it back to the front line. The room soon filled with shouts — _traitor! coward! you’re disgusting!_ — and some of it came from the others and some from Joseph, most likely, but it all ran together.

At last the trainers called a halt and the frenzy slowed, not all at once but in groups falling back here and there, the trainees too keyed up to turn off the switch just like that. Joseph staggered back, blood on his boots and knuckles — and, strangely, dribbling into his eye from a cut above his eyebrow — and the rush of the fight faded from his veins and left his muscles shaking.

The traitor lay on the ground, curled in a ball with his knees drawn toward his chest, arms bent at odd angles still bound behind his back. Blood pooled on the ground, dark and shining under the lights, and around them not one of the Juniors made a sound.

“Well done,” said the trainer into the sudden, echoing silence. “Everyone, to your rooms. We’ll call you when it’s time to watch the district Reapings.”

Joseph took one step back, then another, and another, but he didn’t turn until the shallow rise and fall of the traitor’s — James’ — chest confirmed him alive — for now.

 

* * *

 

In a normal year, Joseph and the others in his cohort would have been sent to the detox dorms following the Reaping, to watch the Games through evening recaps with their handlers like civilians instead of the full play by play with trainer commentary. Now, back at his room Joseph packed his things into the ratty cardboard box he brought with him to the Centre five years ago, and sat on his bed staring at the dried blood his boots tracked onto the carpet.

Instead, when the trainers came to fetch him later, they had him leave his belongings and come watch the Parade footage with the others. Joseph caught Kayla’s gaze and asked her a question with his eyes, but she only shrugged and chose a spot at the back of the room.

They’d cleaned up the blood where James lay, but the trainees avoided it anyhow.

 

* * *

 

The day before the Arena, the trainers canceled morning exercises and ordered everyone out into the field. They lined them up, the thirteens in the front all the way to the eighteens at the back, and Joseph knelt on the grass and felt the dirt shift under his weight and fought back his unease. No script for this either, and Joseph had the staggering thought that this was life from here on out. No more answers, no more programming, only unexpected circumstances one after another that he magically had to learn to navigate.

The sooner they let him join the Peacekeeping Academy and get his life back into the pattern of structure and orders the better, but apparently not yet.

They waited in the morning sun, and despite the heat and the annoying whine of the occasional mosquito, no one so much as twitched. Before long the trainers filed out and stood in a line in front of the building, and the slow, distant rumble of danger in the back of Joseph’s mind loosed into a sudden crash when a group of Peacekeepers followed.

James — no, the traitor, don’t name him, don’t humanize him, don’t think about his laugh or how he broke his big toe halfway through their mountain hike but marched through it to stay in the running — stumbled out last. Joseph sat too far away to make out his expression in any detail, especially through the mass of half-healed cuts and bruises, but it seemed to him that either the traitor clung to his acting skills or had been beaten so far inside himself that nothing else showed on his face but grim, exhausted resignation.

And so it ought. Because of him a boy would die tomorrow who should have had a whole life ahead of him. Because of him parents all over the district could no longer go to bed confident that their children would be safe. Because of him District 2 was no longer the bastion of strength and sacrifice and burning, unbroken loyalty that it had been for thirty solid years.

Joseph looked at the traitor, dug deep inside himself for the anger that had carried him through the beating, but came up with nothing. Let it be over soon, he thought to himself. Let justice be served and have done with it.

Then a Peacekeeper stepped forward and lowered a black hood over the traitor’s head, pushing him forward to bare the back of his neck. ( _Aim for the medulla for a clean shot_ , Joseph learns the next year at the Academy, standing with his pistol and staring at a replicated skull sitting in a block of ballistics gel.) Joseph sucked in a hard breath through his nose and clenched his teeth. Beside him Kayla stiffened, but along with the rest of the crowd of trainees still no one moved.

Three Peacekeepers fanned out behind him and pointed their pistols at his skull. Joseph had the sudden half-hysterical thought that that seemed like overkill (at the Academy they’ll tell him one of the bullets is a blank, so that each of the officers can reassure himself it was the other two who fired the lethal shot) before the head of the Program strode forward.

She read out the charges in a loud, ringing voice that needed no microphone or accompanying propaganda video to have its impact. A chill crept over Joseph’s flesh, and whatever else, he prayed that this was worth it. This death, the beating that came before it, washing his classmate’s blood from his knuckles, this would keep the district safe. That no more price would be demanded to pay for one boy’s cowardice.

Three shots rang out as one, a sharp _crack_ followed by a single flat echo, and the traitor’s body slumped sideways. The Peacekeepers holstered their weapons, hooked the limp body under its bound arms, and dragged it back inside.

The head did not follow right away. She stared out over them, eyes searching for any flinch, any weakness, and Joseph and a hundred other teenagers held themselves in brittle silence. Finally she nodded. “This, children, is what happens when we break the rules,” she said. “Do not — ever — think that you are special, or the next example will be much worse.”

At the front of the line one of the thirteens let out a choked, ragged gasp, unable to stop himself, and the head narrowed in on him with a sniper’s precision. “Does this upset you, boy?” she snapped, The boy, at least, was not stupid enough to answer, but the sound had been enough. “What about the rest of you? You don’t like to see a boy get shot like this, is that it? You think it’s not _right_? It’s not _kind_?”

For a moment her eyes found Joseph and bored into him, but he kept steady and soon her gaze passed on. “How many children died during the Dark Days?” she demanded. No one answered; they didn’t have to. They’d all learned the statistics from their earliest days in school, could recite the deaths and damages as easily as they could now name every fallen tribute in the history of the Games. “Just like that,” she said, biting off each word like a bullet. “Just. Like. That. The law is what keeps us safe. The rules are what separates us from war. You don’t remember the war, but I do. Your parents do. And if we break the rules, we could be there again. So remember that, children, the next time you think you can shirk the duty you signed up for. This is what happens to people who break the rules.”

* * *

 

_This is what happens to people who break the rules._  

The Treaty of Treason might be repeated each year until children who barely toddled could recognize the words, but for Joseph, that phrase wound its way into the deepest corners of his brain and sat there, waiting. Each time he chafed at a restriction as a young Peacekeeper cadet, each time his commanding officer told him to stay back and let a more experienced soldier take point — as the years crept on and his feelings for his partner grew more than professional and the end of his first twenty with its promise of marriage felt so close and yet so far away — Joseph remembered. He remembered the line of Peacekeepers and the black bag and the _crack_ of the pistols and _this is what happens to people who break the rules_.

 

* * *

 

It sustains Commander Joseph Seward through twenty years of active duty, of gunning down runaways from the districts who made it across the border and tried to sneak into a quarry town for a quiet life, of arresting thieves who swore they only had to feed their starving children, of bringing the baton down on the back of a child in Ten caught with a bag of stolen tesserae grain.

This is what happens to people who break the rules.

This is what happens.

This is what happens, and this, and this.

He never breaks the rules.

 

* * *

 

He tells Adora the whole story on the night he proposes, as they lie together in a tangled heap, legs twined and skin slick with sweat. He tells her of his silence and the gnawing guilt and staring at James’ battered face and driving his boot into his classmate’s head. Adora had been eighteen at the Reaping same as Joseph, but she’d left the Program at sixteen to join the Academy and missed the performance after. Joseph tells her with his face in her shoulder, the first weakness he’s ever shown her after ten years of partnership in the force. Once she’d sewn up his side with a field kit after a crazed terrorist’s shot knocked him down, and he’d gritted his teeth and joked his way through it.

Afterward Adora holds him close and strokes his hair. She’s teased him for his obsessive rule-following before, used to ply him with hypothetical trick questions before realizing how much it upset him, but now she’s quiet and waits until Joseph’s heartbeat slows and his breaths return to normal.

“I need you to know,” Joseph says. “In case — in case that’s too much, in case it gives you second thoughts. I won’t blame you. You have the right to know.”

Adora shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I loved you already, Joseph, but now I understand.”

She doesn’t, she can’t possibly, there’s a heavy, unspoken camaraderie between all of the trainees present in that room that day that Adora will never join, but she thinks she does, and that’s good enough. It will have to be.

“I love you,” she says again, fiercely, and Joseph blinks away the bag and the gun and the body and raises himself up to kiss her.

 

* * *

 

Their son is impossibly small, his entire body fitting into the crook of Joseph’s arm, head cradled in his palm and perfect, pink feet pressed into the crook of his elbow. He’s small and fragile and perfect, dark wisps of hair and wide, searching eyes and a fist that waves and grapples clumsily at Joseph’s thumb.

Joseph told Adora, before they tried for children, of the guilt that still drove him awake at night. How every boy in the bloodbath for twenty years had been the one Joseph let go to his death with his silence, how no matter how hard Joseph worked he could never make up the shortfall. How every promotion, every commendation, every kiss from Adora beneath the dogwood tree beyond their house, felt like a betrayal of the duty he should have performed.

He’d told her of the one thing that would make it right, and she’d looked at him with her solemn brown eyes and given her assent.

“You’re going to save a lot of children one day,” Joseph says to the infant in his arms, keeping his voice low and crooning. “You’re going to represent everything that’s good and right and just. You’re going to do what I couldn’t. You’re going to stand for something so much greater than yourself, and you won’t understand it for a while but one day you will.”

The doctor gives Adora a quizzical look, but she shakes her head. It’s not an outsider’s place to know. “Yes he will,” she says, and it was not an easy birth but she smiles at Joseph anyway, tired but loving.

When the doctor asks what name he should write on the birth certificate, Joseph and Adora look at each other and together answer, “Creed.”

 

* * *

 

Joseph’s younger son stares up at him, eyes wide and welling with tears as the welt across his palm reddens. Joseph looks down at him, the switch bending under the grip of his fingers. “This is what happens, Alec,” Joseph says firmly, and though Alec’s tears and startled cry of pain hit him hard, they cannot shake his resolve. He knows what he must look like to his son, giant and towering and terrifying, less a father than a great and terrible master, but better this image than the black bag and the guns and the slump of a body against the ground. Better this than a boot to the skull and three dozen teenagers shouting and spitting and swinging their fists and three Peacekeepers and two loaded weapons.

Joseph gathers his strength because he must, and fixes Alec with a hard, firm stare. Better Alec see his father’s anger than understand his fear. “This is what happens when we break the rules. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” Alec says, and he swallows and blinks back the tears and draws himself together. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your apology, I want your obedience,” Joseph snaps. The Capitol does not care for apologies. To the Capitol, apologies are made by the families when the criminal’s body is returned in a bag — if they’re even afforded that luxury. That will not happen here. He won’t let it.

“Yes sir,” Alec says, his voice less shaky the second time.

“Good.” Joseph waves his hand. “Go find your brother.”

Alec runs off after Creed, and by dinner he’ll forget all about the stripe on his palm but he’ll remember the lesson, and that’s what matters.

His children will not break the rules. His children will be safe. Joseph will make it so, and if they fear him — if they hate him — they will not be the example made to cow the generations to come, and that will be enough.

Joseph straightens his shoulders. “Creed,” he calls out, and both boys snap to attention. “Bring me the ball and let’s play a game.”

Creed grins, a brilliant flash of teeth, and he and Alec race to see who can get the ball the fastest.

**Author's Note:**

> Read [Make Us Proud](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5179742) if you want to see how the story ends.


End file.
